Kunsthalle Tbilisi – First Mobile Exhibition Promoting Contemporary Georgian Art

Art has no frames and no boundaries, so one can go as far as one’s mind wishes. This year, from May 18 – July 14, for the first time Tbilisi is hosting a moving exhibition that will be without one specific location. The exciting and revolutionary project ‘Kunsthalle Tbilisi’ rolled out its very first inaugural exhibition through presenting two expositions by Georgian artist Nika Kutateladze and Paris-based artist Angelica Mesiti. The two distinct shows were presented at two separate locations. Strange as it may sound, Kutateladze brought an authentic watermill from Georgia’s Guria region part by part and set it up in an old Soviet-era apartment on Kazbegi Street, while the Sydney-born artist unveiled video installation Relay League in partnership with Protocinema in collaboration with Artspace Sydney that was followed by a public talk at a former wine factory on Petriashvili Street. Kutateladze, with his installation Watermill On Former Pavlov Street, embarked on an ambitious exercise with his trilogy to slice up and display elements of Georgia’s recent Soviet past where they intersect with his own. They are monuments that are both public and personal, infused with the artist’s emotion.

This was not the first experiment of bringing architecture into art by a Georgian artist, as his previous exhibitions include: Wall, Coarse calico, Parquet, organized by the Iare Pekhit organization in 2016, and Minibus and Playground in My Old Apartment at 20 Mickevich Street in 2017. His work has also been shown in group exhibitions, including Festinova Garikula 2014-2015. Additionally, Nika participated in residencies at La Station in Nice, France, in 2015 and the Yarat Contemporary Art Center in Baku, Azerbaijan in 2017.

Angelica Mesiti, an internationally renowned artist, will represent Australia at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. Mesiti’s work can be found in major collections throughout Australia and internationally, including: the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris, San Francisco; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt; and in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, Tokyo.

Within Kunsthalle Tbilisi, her three-dimensional show, created in 2017, utilizes as its medium the Morse Code from a 1997 emergency message sent out by a group of French sailors in 1997.

Co-founder of Kunsthalle Tbilisi and Free University Tbilisi Dean, Irena Popiashvili, told GEORGIA TODAY more about the mobile exhibition.

How did the idea of founding Kunsthalle Tbilisi come about?

The idea of Kunsthalle Tbilisi came as a result of discussions I had with KT co-founder Lika Chkuaseli. I was thinking of an institution with museum-level exhibitions that does not necessarily have a permanent collection. Also, we wanted a contemporary art space whose title would immediately reference the art of today – thus, the Kunsthalle. Anyone with a knowledge of the western art world would know the meaning of the word. In short, we wanted to start a space where one can look for contemporary art in Georgia.

How would you assess this first exposition and what should visitors expect from it?

Kunsthalle Tbilisi opened with two parallel exhibitions that set the model we would like to follow. One local artist’s project (Nika Kutateladze’s Watermill) on Former Pavlov Street at 53 Kazbegi Avenue, and one internationally acclaimed artist’s show (Angelica Mesiti’s Relay League presented by Protocinema at Kunsthalle Tbilisi, commissioned by Artspace, Sydney with support by Commissioning Partner the Keir Foundation and the Australia Council for the Arts) at 1 Petriashvili Street in a former winery building.

Kutateladze’s Watermill on Former Pavlov Street is final part of a trilogy and making it happen seemed as unlikely as opening Kunsthalle in Tbilisi. We helped the artist realize his project to buy, transport and install an actual watermill from the mountains of Guria in a typical soviet studio apartment in Tbilisi. The work addresses many issues, among them the abandonment and dying out of Georgian villages. The watermill is the heart of the village: once you take it away, it’s like taking the heart of the village out. The artist followed the river down from the mountains of Guria. There is only the foundation left of some watermills; some roofs have caved in and the watermill that was in the best shape was the one Kutateladze had transported to Pavlov street. The soviet studio apartment is very much a part of the work itself.

Angelica Mesiti’s new 3-channel video installation Relay League 2017 engages with the language of Morse Code as an extinct form of communication. In this case, a musician-composer, a dancer and two dancers who have developed their own movement-sign-language, each interpret the final Morse Code message sent by the French Navy on January 31, 1997: ‘Calling all. This is our last cry before our eternal silence’.

What are your future plans for the project? What is the core aim of Kunsthalle Tbilisi?

The aim of Kunsthalle Tbilisi is to put contemporary Georgian art in the wider context of the international contemporary art scene, to put Tbilisi on the map of the contemporary art scene with parallel exhibitions of established international artists and by doing projects with regional artists. Kunsthalle exhibitions and the idea of Kunsthalle in itself is very community-oriented. The current shows will continue till July 14 and Kunsthalle plans weekly public talks and guided tours in both locations.

Kunsthalle Tbilisi has an advisory board that includes curators from MoMA New York. With the support of Goethe Institute Tbilisi, I organized an Artforum panel discussion for TAF, inviting curators from Kunsthalle Vienna, the Director of Kunstverein Hamburg, and the Curator of Lenbachhaus Munich to share their experience with us and a Tbilisi audience.

By Liko Chigladze